R B McEachern and Jim Hogg

James Stephen Hogg became Governor of Texas in 1890 with the support of farmers, ranchers, and small merchant.

One story of R B McEachern, the first ever student to attend TSBVI, and his interactions with Jim Hogg:

“.. a kind of education that the boys shared was contributed by Robert McEachern, the blind music teacher and poet, who paid frequent evening visits to the office. Jim and Charles [Hogg] would alternate in reading aloud to him, an amply rewarding service by which they learned to know and enjoy The Arabian Nights and works of Scott, Byron, Pope, and many other writers, both ancient and modern.

“They were particularly impressed with a new novel, by John Cooke, Surrey of Eagle’s Nest, that McEachern brought one night; it was a story of a Virginia staff officer just returned from the war. To Jim, whose turn it was, fell the reading of the opening scene in which Surrey hangs up his “dingy gray uniform and battered old sabre for the inspections of his descendants

[long paragraph discussing the passions of military life and the fresh generations who will hear of the adventures].

“An evening’s reading over, the blind man would talk, the boys drinking in the insight of his interpretations. Then they would walk him back to the house where he lived with his mother, who usually had one of her pies waiting for them.”